Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies), McHugh, Dominic [fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

wanted to leave the boat”). The finest numbers, however, are “Over the Purple Hills” and “There’s Always One You Can’t Forget,” both of which are gentle, romantic ballads in E-flat major.59

At their best, one can see how the fruits of the Lerner-Schwartz alliance might have boded well for future collaborations. Evidently the pair were able to work together fairly quickly, for they came up with these seven songs in only a few months, and a script is also extant in the private collection of Paul Schwartz, the composer’s son.60 No less importantly, it is easy to understand why Lerner might have turned to Schwartz: as a composer, one of his stylistic facets was the ability to create a lot of expressive internal harmonic movement in a song, something that he shared with Loewe. Had the film come to pass, Lerner and Schwartz might have gone on to create a string of works together, and of course the announcement of two stage works in addition to Paint Your Wagon shows that this was their intention.

But at this point, a somewhat surprising swap of composers took place. With no progress apparently having been made on Li’l Abner, Schwartz signed up to write the score for a show called By the Beautiful Sea, starring the Broadway veteran Shirley Booth (who had previously featured in Schwartz’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Louis Calta’s New York Times column reported on November 12, 1953, that the composer Burton Lane, who had earlier collaborated with Lerner on the Fred Astaire film Royal Wedding, had abruptly withdrawn from By the Beautiful Sea “because of changes made in the story line,” and that Schwartz would now take over. His work on the new show (due to open in late February 1954) would “not interfere with the plans for Li’l Abner, the musical based on Al Capp’s comic strip,” which, according to Calta, “will go into rehearsal next August.”61

But Schwartz’s defection to another show seems to have invoked Lerner’s ire, according to the composer’s son, Jonathan Schwartz. Years later, the latter explained how his father had been in need of money and could not afford to wait for the notoriously slow Lerner to get around to working on their projected stage musicals, hence he went to write By the Beautiful Sea.62 Lerner broke off the relationship with Schwartz and teamed up with Lane, who had left the Beautiful Sea show, to write Li’l Abner. On June 21, 1954, it was reported that Abner was one of three musicals under consideration by director Robert Lewis. According to Zolotow’s New York Times column, “Herman Levin expects to have the Alan Jay Lerner–Burton Lane show in shape for a November rehearsal date.”63 Another article of August 15, 1954, confirmed that Lerner was “Now busy collaborating with Burton Lane on the forthcoming stage musicalization of the Li’l Abner comic strip.”64

But it was not to be. On seeing Gabriel Pascal’s obituary in early July, Lerner thought once more of Pygmalion, and on meeting up with Loewe again on the persuasion of Lerner’s then-wife, Nancy Olson, he realized they could work together on the play.65 Composer and lyricist put everything else aside and set to work. The entrance of Herman Levin into the story at this stage was crucial, since although the Li’l Abner musical did not come to pass in this form (it eventually reached the stage in 1956 with a book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, music by Gene De Paul, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer), it was Levin’s determination that brought My Fair Lady about in the face of adversity. Lerner informed Levin that he was putting Li’l Abner to bed for the time being and that he wanted Levin to produce Pygmalion instead, with Loewe as the composer.66 The producer was understandably surprised but trusted Lerner, and there was now no looking back.

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FROM PAGE TO STAGE

THE GENESIS OF MY FAIR LADY

PYGMALION WITH LEVIN, LERNER, AND LOEWE

October–December 1954

On October 11, 1954, Herman Levin announced to the press that he was to produce Lerner and Loewe’s musical version of Pygmalion. Sam Zolotow reported that the Lerner-Lane treatment of Li’l Abner had been deferred and that “Pygmalion may be put on here.”1 This caused dismay and shock in the Theatre Guild camp, and Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner wrote a letter about the matter to Lerner. He responded on October 19:

My reaction is puzzlement and bewilderment. Pascal, not The Theatre Guild, was the owner of the rights, and it was he who approached us about the project in California, much before any arrangement with The Theatre Guild … Gaby was negotiating with Thompson and Allen before he died. Suppose that negotiation had been concluded and they had approached Fritz and me and we had accepted? Would you have written us as you did? Of course not. The property belonged to Pascal as it now belongs to his estate, and it is with his estate we negotiated.2

Lerner’s letter went on to explain that he and Loewe did not return to the Theatre Guild with the project because of the difficulties they had over the royalty agreement. He claimed that everybody else “held firm on their royalty and only the author was asked to accept less than minimum. My ego was not troubled, but my sense of fairness was definitely jarred.” He ended, triumphantly: “Suffice to say I have improved my lot with Herman Levin.” The response from the Theatre Guild was strong: “To say that we have been played a dirty trick is not a fair characterization of what has happened.”3 But in spite of the Guild’s fury at having been left out of a project on which they had once worked so hard, Levin, Lerner, and Loewe moved on with the show.

The correspondence from Levin’s papers begins on October 2, 1954, with a letter from Noël Coward in London to Levin in New York, in which he stated that he was about to play cabaret seasons in London and New York,